Page 462 - Some Dance to Remember

432 Jack Fritscher

“But what about your own privacy?”
“He made all our privacy public.”
A passion of obsessive love, given the opportunity, can turn to obses-
sive hate. Passion is one of those things that can birth changeling good-
and-evil twins.
“You hate him enough to do it to get even, don’t you?”
“No.” Ryan’s voice was low. “I love him. I’d never hurt him.”
“Do you love him enough not to do the movie?”
“I love him enough to make him sit up on the couch, wherever he is,
in front of his TV set, and try one last time to make him see what I saw in
him. We were the best thing that ever happened to either of us. He knew
that. He knows that. I want him always to remember that. I want him to
know the hell I’ve been through these past three years since he went away.
I want to know if he thinks of me at all every waking hour of the day. I
want to know if he dreams at night about me the way I dream about him.”
“You can’t want him back.”
“I never meant for him to leave.”
“You threw him out,” I said.
“I didn’t mean forever. I meant like I told Teddy to get out. Just for
a while. To cool his heels. When I called him ‘Rhett Butler,’ my mouth
got too smart-ass for my own good. When I told him to get out of the
car, I meant...”
“What did you mean?”
“When I told him to get out, I meant the same thing Charley-Pop
meant when he told me to get to my room and stay there until I could
come out and behave myself.”
“He didn’t go to his room. He didn’t behave himself. He went to a
phone booth...”
“Just like Superman....”
“...and called Logan. You can’t forget that. He got you beat up and
raped.”
“Do you think I care about that?”
“You act like you care. You’re still in a rage at Logan.”
“Then you don’t know me.”
“I know you as well as I know myself.”
“I’ve never much had any feeling toward Logan one way or the other.
Ever. Not even after his laughable, pathetic version of a rape.”
“What’s real with you, Ryan?”
“I want something I can’t have.”
“What movie are you?” I asked. “What movie are you trying to be?”

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